


Merkel

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [23]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Internalised Racism, RLY THO: ROCKS, Rape/Non-con Elements, THOSE ARE NOT MY TAGS THERE'S TOTALLY ROCKS IN THE SAND, comforting the dying, just tuck and roll and you'll be fine, sand is soft, ssh!, war boys dealing with a post-joe world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4895911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Merkel: To retrieve another climbers gear because they are unable to or because it would be more convenient.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>“Joe’s gotta be dead,” he said uneasily. “Means he’s not...not Immortan, right?”</p><p>Gilly still wasn’t sure if he meant ‘Immortan’ as the title, or as actually immortal. Maybe both. She nodded cautiously, “Reckon so.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gilly took a step back to let one of the Warboys shuffle past through the narrow space between the wreck and the rock wall of the canyon. He didn’t acknowledge her - some of them still didn’t even after.. she wasn’t sure how many days. Three? Four?

She followed him with her eyes, and yes, of course - he was on his way to the makeshift shrine the Warboys had built around a harpoon, a breathing mask with horse teeth, and a bloody lower jaw. The boys who could limp or crawl there were coming together for one of their regular sessions of chanting “Vee-eight!”

Their white paint was wearing off, but they used motor grease from the wrecks to paint their black markings. The sight of them still made Gilly and Vicks twitch.

Another boy limped toward her, but paused at a respectful distance. Paint worn off, his skin was the dark brown the earth of the Green Place had been. He’d been one of the drummers - Treb, she thought his name was.

“Don’t you want to go?” she nodded toward the others.

“Joe’s gotta be dead,” he said uneasily. “Means he’s not... not _Immortan_ , right?”

Gilly still wasn’t sure if he meant ‘Immortan’ as the title, or as actually immortal. Maybe both. She nodded cautiously, “Reckon so.”

“Miss Giddy says Imperator Furiosa must be Immortan now,” he says, as if trying the thought.

“Yeah.” Mothers, she hoped so. Furiosa had been badly hurt, last Gilly had seen her, but Gale had been with them, and Janey too. If they’d actually managed to take the bloody Citadel, this might all have been worth it.

“ Organic says it’s better for us if she ain’t,” the young man considered with a strange ambivalent note . “Says the breeders’ll be softer,  Citadel easier to claim from them .”

_ Not with Janey to back them up _ , Gilly thought privately.  _ And not if we manage to make it there.  _ Vicks was hurt, but she’d only needed to be in the presence of the Organic Mechanic for a minute before deciding she didn’t want his kinda care.

“ And what do  _ you  _ think?”

The drummer looked surprised, as if he hadn’t considered that.

“Furiosa’s crew’s the shinest, ain’t it?” he finally said, giving a furtive look around. “Warboys always tryin’ to catch her eye. She take good care of’em, make sure they die historic.”

Gilly decided not to think too much about what that meant.

The young man nodded to himself as if reaching a conclusion. “If Furiosa’s Immortan, it’ll be like we’re all on her crew, right?”

He turned to look down the canyon and Gilly did too. There was a strange pattern to the movements of the Warboys, and she couldn’t read them yet like she could read the way sand throws up behind a bike or a car, the way the folds of cloth hide a weapon, the way that the patterns of crows in the sky shift as they move from attack to defense.

_ Defensive,  _ Gilly realized,  _ that’s what it was _ . The movements of those white-smudged bodies moved like crows did when Valkyrie hunted, moving close together for safety but then splitting apart to leave the weak defenseless. Alone.

_ But who' _ _ s  _ _ hunting? Who or what makes these men act like prey? _

 

* * *

 

The desert falls away behind Max, the clicks marking distance like Old World machineries that marked time. Night is opened above him, an expanding bellows, and he feels it like the first breath after surfacing from a dream.

(his dreams are never good)

(his dreams are full of hands covering his face, of his name in accusation, of the wheeze of dying breaths both old and young and Furiosa )

(his dreams are hallways he can never navigate, and he thinks that there is a word for what these sleep hauntings actually are… but he can’t find the word, he reaches but there’s only a blank. much like when he reaches for himself)

He bears gifts both direct and indirect, in the trailer to the buggy he’s driving. They come from three; from a War Boy, from those the War Boy refused to name, and from–

“ _Here”, the woman of plenty pressed the two large thermos into Max’s hands as he stared at them blankly.  He had startled when she’d appeared suddenly around a hallway, skin like twilight dunes, and he’d almost struck her, so why… “They’re insulated, should keep our milk for at least a day or so, more if you shade them from the sun.”_

_ Max knew about thermoses, but he hadn’t seen any similar containers himself for a long long time. They were unfathomably useful, and incredibly rare. He knew that in any other situation, people would have their heads caved in to possess such things, limbs scattered, face mauled. He looked up at the milker’s night eyes in confusion. _

“ _Fluid for fluid, isn’t that right? Heard you were the bloodbag that propped Furiosa up,” she said gently. “Consider this thanks.”_

_ He shrugged uncomfortably. His back itched. Max muttered, “You let down the water.” It was thanks enough, the mob of people might have been overwhelming had they not done so, with no time to let the lift rise, and no time for Max himself to slip off. _

_ The milker just shook her head sharply, “We’d had control of the water for awhile but then a pair of Gatekeepers stormed in. They had their poles and while we had the numbers…” she looked away, seemed frustrated. “Some of us were willing to fight, but the blades at the end of the things had reach. We didn’t– didn’t know how to get past them.” _

_ Max squinted, and made a questioning noise. _

“ _Furiosa,” the milker said simply, voice grateful but also hard. It was from self-directed anger; Max knew the sound. “She took them down and made it look easy but the old ones she brought back? Vuvalini, they call themselves?”_

_ He nodded at her prompting. _

“ _One of them knows fixing bodies. They said it aggravated her wounds.”_

_ Max made a noise of understanding then, he’d wondered how Furiosa went from standing triumphant on the lift to being all but bed-ridden. He should have stayed longer, maybe. He should have giving her more of his blood. He– He’d met the milker’s eyes with difficulty but only found a matching ‘should have done’ in her eyes. _

“ _She could have kept control of the room even then, like we failed to do. Kept it for herself. Instead she walked away.” A noise of complete disbelief, “She walked away from the water and the milk; gave it to us, and said we knew it best. Had one of the Vuvalini help secure the room with some of the Pups. For us.”_

_ A long slow breath heaved out and she stared at him with jaw tight. “Heard you gave Furiosa the blood to allow her to do that. Heard you going out on a request from one of those widows that she’d took for her own, who’re doing the same as she is: letting us dispense both water and milk.“ _

_ She poked at the thermos and Max almost stumbled from the force of it. “So take this. I’m ‘dispensing.’ Call it trade, if you must. And if you bring them back, we’ll refill them.” _

_ Max had given a long slow blink and grunted again, still uncertain whether to return the gift, but hands already curling around the thermoses, not knowing what to say. _

_ The milker only snorted, exasperated at his confusion, “Name’s Britt, if you care.” _

“ _Ahh,” Max shuffled, looked around at the walls around them, looked down at his hands, looked at the containers of milk. “It’s, um. Max.”_

“ _Max.” She repeated, and the sound of his name didn’t come with accusation, when he’d expected it to._

_ He didn’t know what to do with that. _

_ He’d nodded shakily, and left for Furiosa’s room. He was late, anyway. _

Max drives as if he could leave memories behind him.

(it never works)

The walls of the canyons pull close.

  
  


* * *

 

“Mothers, but these boys are fucked up in the head,” Gilly sighed. She slumped into the driver’s seat of the wrecked car they’d claimed for themselves. Vicks gave her a steady look from the passenger’s, which she wasn’t able to leave much because of her injured knee.

“Tell me about it. I told these two boys I've been sitting with, Kukri and Razor, to stop eating potatoes raw and put them at the edge of the fire, and you’d think I’d told them to burn them to charcoal.”

“Did they do it though?”

“After the History Women confirmed it,” Vicks quirked a grin. “Then it was all ‘so shine’ and ‘McFeasting’ and ‘Fit for Valhalla’.”

They were Repair Boys, apparently, and they were injured enough to be immobilised but well enough to be deeply frustrated by not being able to help. Vicks had given them Furiosa's metal arm to repair what they could, which seemed to help them feel useful, even though their cursing now focused on not having the right spares or tools.

She sobered. “You look like you had a harder time.”

“Had another ask for me when he was dyin’,” Gilly explained. “They’re all terrified of ‘dying soft’ and that 'doctor’ just dumps 'em under a rock ledge. Nobody was willing to sit with him, so he wanted me to witness him.”

“You sat with him?”

Gilly nodded. “I think I was the only one he was willing to show he was afraid. Told him one of the old stories to make it easier for him. He gave me this–”

She pulled a small silver cannister from her pocket. They both looked at it and sighed.

“Not sure how a place with men this fucked in the head could be a new Green Place,” Vicks said eventually.

“Some of 'em don’t seem so bad. That drummer lad’s got a head on his shoulders, just ain’t used to using it. Like that warboy that came with Furiosa and the girls.”

“Mm. I suppose. Those repair boys are— there's potential there.” She'd also realised that the scars on Razor's chest meant that he was probably what the Vuvalini would have called a Daughterson. That was interesting; she hadn't expected to find people such as him among the Warboys. From a distance they'd looked like a uniform, homicidal, mouth-frothing mob, ready to tear apart anything that wasn't like them.

“We're nearly ready to try to blow the blockade, see if we can get something driveable to the other side. The plan is to take one of us with them to the Citadel.”

“To appease Furiosa, or as hostage?”

Gilly huffed a breath. “Either, depending on their reception, I guess.”

  
  


* * *

 

_ Earlier: _

  
  


“What’s a rabbit though?” Rotor interrupted the old breeder. Well, he supposed she weren’t breeding no more. Wasteland women always did seem twice as vicious as the men, and nothing to compare to those they’d had back at the Citadel. Perhaps that was why Furiosa had chosen these ones for crew, even if as a full-life this Gilly appeared to be running quick towards the point where no repair would help.

Rotor, half-life that he was, rested at that point so he should know. He breathed careful, but still his chest hurt, his shoulder hurt, the mangle that was left of his legs hurt. His wounds couldn't seem to stop bleeding.

He asked for one of Furiosa’s crew then, when everyone else turned away. The Imperator had never let anyone mess with her men, he’d hardly think the new order at the Citadel wouldn’t extend to these women she’d taken in.

More importantly?

Gilly… she looked at him. Full in the face instead of eyes averted, even as his life was leaking out between them.

Rotor thought she might remember him enough to carry the story back to the Citadel, even if she still didn’t seem to understand what a Witnessing even was. It burned his face and his gut that he was sneaking this honor, but he couldn't help himself. He knew that the next time he sleeps he won’t wake up, and he had to reach for  _ something _ .

“A rabbit? Well, its like a small animal that skitters across the desert. It has fur on it… hair,” Gilly corrected when she saw his confusion. “Keeper had most of the skulls of animals past.”

“Is it like a lizard?” Rotor asked doubtfully.

Something strange crossed the woman’s face and he found the expression funny. Rotor chuckled a little and then immediately regretted it for the pain that lanced through his chest. His sight grew black for a frightening moment but he was drawn back by the feel of a hand on his shoulder.

He tried to focus on her face and blinked the tears away from his eyes and hoped the woman didn’t notice his weakness.

Gilly gently wiped at the corner of his eye, and he jerked away from her, shoulders tight, eyes closing against the regret and the deepening shame.

“I guess we can call it a lizard for today,” she murmured quietly. Then raised her voice a little, “So this lizard was made of cloth and stuffing and given to one of the… one of the Pups. A velveteen lizard.”

“ _ Velveteen _ ?” Rotor scoffed around the thick in his voice, dismissively, “sounds soft.”

“Yes,” she replied, unwinding a bit of cloth from around her neck, one hidden away between other layers, “It is.” She wound the cloth once around his palm and then closed his fingers around it with her own.

_ Oh. _ It felt like short bristles, like war pup hair before it was shorn.

“This Pup, at first he was only drawn towards his machine toys, his shinier things, but by and by he’d come to appreciate his velveteen lizard.”

Rotor looked his question up at her.  _ Why? _

“Because velveteen is strong, not brittle. His machines broke on him, crashed, snapped; and cloth bends.” Her fingers are warm around his. “When the Pup threw his lizard around the lizard stayed in one piece; he’d smashed it, slept on it, brought it with him on all his explorations. And soon he thought that this lizard is Real.”

“ ’s just cloth though,” Rotor muttered sullenly, “just something held together with stitches.“

"And machines aren’t, with nuts and bolts?” Gilly waved it aside with a free hand, “Anyways, machines can’t be Real.”

“ What even is 'Real’ then?” he bursts out “How can the lizard even  _ become _ it, if— if even a machine can’t?”

For Rotor like for all War Boys, to be machine was their highest of aspirations.  _ Machines were infallible _ , Rotor thinks,  _ the engine and the holy V8 and that of— _

That of the War Rig, and the Doof Wagon, and all those cars twisted up at the base of the canyons.

Twisted up like his own body, unspooling around him.

“ 'Real isn’t how you are made’,” Gilly said with the air of a quote, of a Remembering, “ 'It’s a thing that happens to you.’ ”

Rotor closed his eyes in a long blink, “A thing that hurts, innit it right?”

“Sometimes,” Gilly agreed, squeezing his hand, “That’s life though, when you are Real. We all become it bit by bit. But it doesn’t happen if you’re not strong, if you’re not soft, if you’re not sturdy.”

“ But how can y'be all of those at  _ once _ ?” he wheezed out. It’s getting hard to catch his breath.

“You are all that right now, aren’t you?” Gilly asked him with piercing eyes, “No one else of all these Boys has had the strength to ask for me. And I will Witness you as I have kept all those of my sisters who’ve fallen these past days.”

She made a strange gesture then, as if reaching out to touch these sisters and bring them to her chest. Her heart. As if she’s keeping them, and have kept them, and Rotor has the sudden terrible shock of realizing and recognizing that she knew what honor he’d been thieving. Had known even before she’d started speaking.

“I…” Rotor tried to speak, failed, watched as the dark grew at the edges of his sight with panic, scrambled with his free hand at his pants for— “Do y'think that I could be—”

He can’t ask it, he didn’t have the right. Or the time. Rotor glanced down at his hand, at the canister he’d pulled out, to chrome his grill.

_ (“Anyways, machines can’t be Real.”) _

He closed his fingers around it and pressed it at the woman with his fading vision. “Keep it; if yer Crew, y'should have one.”

Gilly’s fingers fall away from him to catch it, and it’s  _ fine _ , he’s finding it hard to maintain his grip anyway.

“What happens though?” Rotor whispered with the last of his strength, sightless, very cold, “To th’lizard, what…”

He distantly felt a warm hand on his forehead, straining to hear her response.

And at last the whisper came and followed him down into the darkness, “he lived again…”

_ Oh _ , was his last thought.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dens were filled to capacity with pups, with breeders, with milking mothers, with the Sisters - everybody speaking loudly, pups crying, breeders calling out names. Ace watched as a woman tried to wipe away the facepaint of a howling, struggling pup.
> 
> "What in the Bleeding Buzzard sphincter is going on?"

Ace heard the commotion in the hallway and was at the door, knife drawn, before anybody could touch it. It was not an attack though, but one of the older warpups the council used as runners.

"Miss Gale says to come to the younger pup dens right away."

Ace looked back at the Boss. She had been resentfully tinkering with the replacement arm, Rachet nearby to occasionally hold something for her. She was looking at him, putting her work aside.

"Did she ask for me or the Imperator?"

"Only the Ace," the pup quoted, wilting under the Boss' glare. "Not Fu-Furiosa."

Clearly annoyed, she picked her work back up and ignored Ace as he left with the pup.

 

The dens were filled to capacity with pups, with breeders, with milking mothers, with the Sisters - everybody speaking loudly, pups crying, breeders calling out names. Ace watched as a woman tried to wipe away the facepaint of a howling, struggling pup.

"What in the Bleeding Buzzard sphincter is going on?"

He hadn't meant to speak so loud, but the pups, attuned to the warboy voices of their minders, stilled as once and turned to him, and then everybody else did too. Then they all began to speak at once. Ace spotted Miss Gale coming toward him together with Capable. He stepped into the hallway so he would actually be able to hear them.

"We discovered that the white paint is lead," Miss Gale said, looking harried. "It's making you all sick, so we wanted to—"

Ace made a startled hand motion, and she nodded, paused, and seemed to take a moment to read his confusion. "Lead builds up in your body. It's a slow poison in the amounts you're using, but it's probably contribution to this 'half life' business."

"I'm not sick," Ace said, but he heard the uncertainty in his own words.

"Headaches? Trouble sleeping? Trouble goin' to the dunny? Agressio—" Gale cut herself off. "It might even cause the lumps."

Ace stared at her. _Was it true? How could he know?_ "Whatcha trying to do then?"

Gale looked impossibly weary, and Ace could sympathise. "We were just going to talk to everybody about not putting on new paint when it wore off."

"If it's very important to you, we can look for something else to make white paint of," Capable added. "But then the mothers got wind of the plan and…" she gestured vaguely. "The brakes came off. They want to see their children."

"For the pups Earning their paint is a rite of passage.” Ace hesitated, but these were Furiosa’s favored, he couldn't keep it from them. “They think you're takin' that away from them and sending them back to the breeders quarters."

He himself felt an uneasy coil of agreement with those words. If they wanted to take away everything the warboys' lives hinged on, he couldn't see how the Citadel would become what Furiosa wanted.

Gale tipped her head back into her neck and groaned. "Great Mighty Mother, I thought it might be somethin' like that."

"Can you help? Will you help?" Capable asked him, her eyes huge and worried, and Ace tried not to growl, because he had no choice, did he? Furiosa had put these people in charge and it was his task to make their work as easy as possible. Whether he believed or agreed had little clout in the matter. He just wished they'd run these things by Furiosa or him or Kompass before it became this giant mess.

He turned back to the doorway of the dens, and went back in.  

 

Janey and the other Sisters had managed to keep things from becoming a chaos while he talked to Gale; the breeders were on one side of the room, though they looked agitated and some were crying. The pups on the other side of the space, huddling together anxiously. They all went quiet when he reappeared.

He went over to the pups, and they clustered around him.

"Boss, Boss, they're tryin' to make us soft," he heard from many mouths, saw in many young eyes.

Ace took a moment to look at these small ones and think about the uncertain future they were barreling into, perhaps even their collective sandstorm ahead. He wanted these pups to come out the other side of that.

He glanced up at the women across the room at the way they look at him with doubt and hard eyes and Ace huffed, feeling cornered. Feeling like how the pups looked. He shook his head at the situation and glanced back down at the pups. There was at least one thing he was certain of:

"What are you?" he asked the group.

"Warpups," they chanted, familiar with this, so far.

"And what are Warpups?"

"Brave and strong!"

"Yes, you are," he reassured. "And what am I?"

"Warboy!"

"And what are Warboys?"

"Big an' brave an' strong an' kamikrazy," they answered in choir. Ace tried to ignore the sudden muttering from the other side of the room. They really had no idea what they were asking.

"True, but we're only kamikrazy when we go to war, right?"

The pups nodded, no longer looking so anxious. This was familiar; their minders had trained them like this.

"And if I wash my face, I am still a Warboy," he said, projecting confidence and utter assurance.

The pups were quiet, shuffling uneasily. The paint had always been a unifier, that once you were painted you were the Immortan’s family, and once you were family you had older brothers. Ones that lifted you up when you were caught on a ledge and gave you a bit of protection when being shorted and who laughed at you when you couldn’t reach what they were holding and who kicked you when you weren’t trying hard enough, until you _were_ trying hard enough. Until you became strong. Until you could be War boy. These pups had learned that the paint _was_ what turned them from pups into warpups, what turned separate into family. Ace suddenly declaring it wasn't important was baffling to them.

"I'll show you."

He glanced at Capable, and she read him correctly, brought him a damp rag.

He cleaned his face. The pups watched avidly.

"See? Still the Ace," he said, hoping his own unease wasn't showing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd completely washed off his paint. His face felt strange and bare. "Still a warboy."

They nodded uncertainly.

"And if you wash your faces, you'll all still be warpups. Nobody can take that away from you."

One small hand reached out and clutched at his pants.

They looked at him, afraid. And it made him tired. Ace sat down on a ledge against the wall, sick of towering over these kids while he rattled their certainties. He smiled weakly when the pups sat down at his feet, recognising this as a sign of story time.

"I have a friend who works on the Doof drums," he began. Had. _Had_ a friend. From what he'd heard, the Doof Wagon had crashed, and Treb wouldn't return. Ace tried to dismiss that thought. That wasn't what was important to the pups right now.

"When I have time, I go to visit him. Warboys can do that. Most of us have friends."

He looked down on the group of small pups, most of them less than two years out of the breeding quarters. He glanced at the breeders, the tension visible in their faces. The pups had been drilled out of wanting their mothers; it was part of the induction phase. Some of them might want to cross the room right now, but were afraid to be judged for it, by their peers, by Ace.

"Warpups can have friends too. Or… other people you like spendin' time with. You can visit them. Doesn't make you stop bein' a warpup."

The pups nodded hesitantly. Some of them were glancing to the other side of the room.

"If there's somebody you wanna go say hi to, you can," Ace assured. "If you wash your face maybe they'll recognise you easier, but—" he threw a look at Gale, _work with me on this_ , "you don't have to wash if you don't want to. You're a warpup no matter what."

He'd hoped maybe some of the braver ones might get up, but none of the pups moved, giving each other furtive looks or looking down, mulish. Ace caught Gale's eyes.

"You think about that, okay?" he told the pups. "I'm going to say hello to my friend over there."

He levered himself to his feet, quietly cursing his ribs. It felt like he'd been dealing with this misery for weeks. It stopped him cold to remember it had only been a week since he woke up in the wasteland. Only been five days since the Boss returned. So much had changed in such a short time, and still it wasn't nearly enough. He needed to— needed to go and talk to the warboys, make them understand what was needed. Who they'd need to be from now on. If the Wastelander was Furiosa's new Ace, the man wouldn't know to do this, let alone how. And Ace might be hurt by the way she'd summarily replaced him, but he had too much pride to set the other man up to fail.

Too much ingrained habit in wanting to make the crew strong.

He went over to Gale, slow and deliberate for the pups, and was relieved to see her approving nod. It looked like most of the breeders had calmed down too, while being talked to softly by the Sisters and the Vuvalini about not wanting everything to happen at once.

Gale reached out to him, and he blinked when she pulled his forehead down to hers, much as Furiosa might have done. The forehead touch was lighter, but his gut did something funny with the thought that this was where the Boss had gotten that gesture from.

"Gandharva **!** " he heard a woman behind him cry, and he turned around to see her closing a pup into her arms. Some of the others were coming now too, and a few minutes later it wasn't the breeders on one side and the pups on the other anymore, but a big mingled group of cautious embraces and clasped hands

He looked down to see a pup cling to his leg, small face messy with half-wiped off paint and tears. Automatically cupped his hand around the head.

"What's with you?"

"Mama's not here," the pup whispered, soft enough that Ace interpreted the meaning more from the general air of misery.

He glanced up at Gale, unsure what to do with that, because they should have expected this. She kneeled down and gently guided the kid's face out of Ace's cargo pocket, wiped it clean.

"Want to go with me to have another look?" she said, and after a long moment the kid nodded and went with her.

 

A group of pups was clumped together on the far side of the room, some of whom didn't look like they had tried to find anybody, but a few who had tried but hadn't found anybody they recognised or who recognised them. There were several women standing on their own also; by their crying at least two of them had discovered their kid had died. The others were comforting them as best they could.

Ace sat down on a ledge by the group of pups, feeling exhausted. They edged over to him, settling in so that he was between them and the women.

He felt like he ought to say something, but he couldn't imagine what.

After a while, Janey sat down next to him. She stretched out her legs with a sigh.

"You're good with 'em. Know if any of 'em are yours?"

He frowned at her, “They all are.” His nod included the room as well as the group at his feet, who’d seemed to hang on his words.

She looked startled. “You’re their sire?”

"...what?"

"You visited the—" she waved a hand. "the mothers, same as the rest of your crew, didn't you? Must be a couple kids running around with your blood in 'em."

"Suppose," Ace grunted. “But, the pups, they’re _all_ ours. And all of us are under Jo—” he broke off, uncertain if it was true anymore, if he was allowed ties to all the pups the way that he’d had as mentor and sibling.

"There's not really a concept of fatherhood," another woman said, sitting down on Janey's other side. She was large and soft, a milking mother probably. "The mothers don't tell the warboys if a pup is of their get - why would they? And they all disappear under the paint anyway."

"A system deliberately designed to break any concept of family," Janey said softly, with distaste. Ace looked at her confused, because what was crew if not—

"Any of yours here?" Janey asked the milker. She shook her head.

"Only had one, born all twisted. Had a lot of milk though, so." she sighed. "Could have turned out worse for me."

She glanced at the small group of pups still huddled up besides Ace, listening intently and obviously. "Thought I'd come along in case there was somebody else here wanting to make a new friend."

 

* * *

 

Toast fell in at her side, striding along in new boots and new pants and her white cloth shed for a makeshift shirt made from scarves and odds and ends.

"Teach me how to shoot," the girl commanded.

Once, Janey might have had some sharp words about such an impolitely worded request; that time was a dry time, a dust time, a time when they all felt alone and soured and chased across the dunes by decay. But she saw the way the girl's shoulders were drawn up around her ears. Remembered the moment that she was plucked out of the war rig by that polecat, how she'd been shoved up against the window to taunt them all.  Felt the way the dark stones were around them and the moisture in the air promising water and fertile earth.

"You want to learn long guns?"

"Any guns. I want to be as good as Furiosa."

"That might take more than a couple days," Janey said with gentle humour. "I'll teach you how to handle a gun and shoot, but why would you need to?" She saw anger in this one and fear with the anger, and those two things together can cause many a rash action. Such an action might mistake a seedling for a weed.

“Because we need people who can shoot, the war party is coming and—”

“We have people here that we can trust I think, to fight, more than enough people to take advantage of this place’s tight corners and bottlenecks,” Janey pretended to hum thoughtfully, “is there someone in particular that you’re concerned about?”

“I—" Toast gestured vaguely.

"Anybody been bothering you?"

“No but,” the girl looked frustrated and burst out, “why should you have to step in if there were? Why shouldn’t I be able to handle them myself?”

“Why _wouldn’t_ I want to help you?”

“It’s not about you _helping_ ,” Toast’s face twisted. “I want to do it myself, _need_ , to, to—”

“To shoot someone. Snap someone. Do you understand that’s what you’re asking? Do you understand why I ask if there’s someone in particular?” They were painfully working to get help and alliances, day by day, in this new Green Place they were shoring up for themselves, and they couldn't afford a loose canon.

“Not someone in particular,” she said. Scoffed, “not someone still living.”

“Then why ask specifically to be as good as Furiosa?”

"Because I'm _scared_ ," Toast hissed quietly, her eyes zoned out mid-distance as she walked next to Janey, "we're barely keeping upright here and all these war parties are coming, and if I shoot as well as Furiosa I won't be scared anymore."

 _Not sure if that's how it works, chick_ , Janey thought ruefully. Wondering if she might regret this next action, because what she said was: "I'll be on the west tower at sunrise."

"I'll be teaching self defence, too," the Vuvalini added after a moment, thinking of trees and roots and new growth. "How to break a hold, get somebody in the soft bits. Disarm their weapons. Good for slighter people against larger opponents. So invite the others, whoever’s interested. We can't expect the Mothers to lock themselves into the breeding court anymore."

Toast nodded, relieved the subject was off herself. "They want to help."

"Yes, but I don't just mean the Mothers. I mean you girls, too," Janey smiled. Toast nodded. "I can't turn you into warriors in a week, but we're going meet every morning and every evening, starting tomorrow morning, and I'll teach you what I can. Dress in something you can move in."

"I'll tell everyone."

* * *

 

That evening Austeyr was settled in next to the Boss, helping her with the new arm, when Miss Gale came in.

"I've already talked to the pups about this," she said, sitting down on the ledge. "I would like for you to stop reapplying the white paint."

The other crew members looked at her, stunned. Ace hadn't bothered with new paint after he'd come back to the Citadel, too injured and sandblasted to care, his arms and chest still had smatterings of white and his face had been wiped clean during the fiasco with the pups. All new paint would do now was rub off onto the blankets, making Furiosa grumble as she always does— Ace stumbled over the thought— _had done_ , maybe. Not like he'd be sharing her bed again, given things as they stood.

Rachet had seemingly forgotten about keeping himself painted, but Kompass had found some. Austeyr, as soon as he'd been back at the Citadel, had fastidiously reapplied his.

"Still lookin' at the stuff, but we think the paint is what makes ya'll sick. Or at least sick sooner."

"But,” Austeyr said, looking at the carefully covering layer of white paint on his arm. "But we're _War Boys_. We've got… I can't go without—"

A hand covered his arm.

Austeyr looked up and Furiosa wasn’t even looking at him, staring at the medic.

“Would removing it really delay their sickness?” Furiosa rasped, speaking for the first time since greeting Miss Gale.

"The melanoma, the skin lumps, the nightfevers? We think so."

A furious set of green eyes shot back to Austeyr, fever bright, “I need you to take it _off._ ” She flicked her gaze around, “all of you.”

“Boss…”

"If it keeps you… " she shuddered with a suppressed cough, throat working at air to form words, “healthy longer…” Austeyr moved closer to rub her back, looking around for some water but she tugged at his arm until he looked back. "Wanna keep you with me—" she needed a moment to draw breath, "Long as possible."

"But _Boss_ ," he whispered, ducking in close so that only she heard. "Y'know I'm... my colour's all wrong. I need the paint."

She coughed more, and he saw blood flecks on the fresh white smeared on the hand she held before her mouth. He twitched helplessly with the urge to _do_ something for her, make her better somehow.

"No," she finally managed. She hooked her stump around his neck and drew him in, until his forehead rested against hers. It wasn't the energetic headconk he'd received from her a few times after raids, the kind that still smarted gloriously hours later, the kind where you didn't want to wash her Imperator's black off your forehead. This was a much lighter touch.

"Y'colour is shine, Aus," she whispered.

" _Boss_ ," he whispered helplessly, because how could she say that? He needed twice the amount of paint most of the others did, to look right. He needed the paint to look like the rest of them, as close to the image of the Immortan as they all could get. Guzzer had shown him the trick of it, when he'd first joined the crew, and Tops and Cam too - how to make the paint extra thick with grease, apply it so it didn't flake. Guzzer had needed even more layers. Enough that he'd told Austeyr he rubbed most of it off when the Imperator invited them to her quarters, or he'd leave it all over her bed.

Furiosa moved her head side to side a little, rubbing her forehead against his as if trying to rub off the paint that made him more like the Immortan, more like the crew. Or perhaps she was trying to rub in the words.

" _Shine_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
> 
> \- [The Velveteen Rabbit](http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html)


	3. Chapter 3

Max pressed himself against the rock face on his belly, edging closer to where he could get a look into the canyon. He’d found a few dead Rock Riders, bullets clean through the foreheads, so there had to be lookouts down there. He supposed that was more organisation than he’d expected to find.

Of course, he wasn’t sure _what_ he had expected to find. Salvage, mostly. Some wounded Warboys, likely.

What he was just now getting a look at was… semi-organised. There was a row of heavily injured people in the shade of an overturned car. One figure - or body? was laid on top of the car, two red lines running from his neck to two people on the ground. Max twitched to recognise the Organic Mechanic. Bleeding somebody empty? That looked like his handiwork.

Not far from there was a single car wreck that had been pulled away from the others. It's chassis was twisted, it had obviously been wrecked beyond salvage, and then it had been set on fire. He swallowed thickly when he realised there were the skeleton remains of at least ten people in there, more that could have driven the car. Apparently the car had been used as funeral pyre.

As he watched, there assembled a circle of men at a well-trodden point in the road. They were surrounding something he couldn’t quite see, making V8 gestures and chanting “V8! V8!”

It wasn’t clear if they knew Joe was dead. There were other men watching the chanters with expressions varying between contemplative and contempt.

Would Austeyr have been one of the circle, if he’d ended up here? Would Nux?

It was hard to imagine. Max wondered if in the case of Austeyr, being part of Furiosa’s crew hadn’t already involved some.. weaning off. Nux had definitely become a different person when not swept up by his God and his fellow Warboys.

Not far behind the wreck of the rig was a circle of less severely injured, around a currently cold fireplace. Warboys with broken legs, or heavily bruised ribcages. It was there that he saw a figure dressed differently than the others. He trained his looking glass there and saw the rifle and—

He hurriedly dropped the looking glass.

From what he could see without it, she looked up and in his direction, perhaps having seen the reflection of his looking glasses. The Vuvalini with the hood. Vicks. She was sitting in a way that suggested her leg was injured, but she was also clearly keeping lookout. The dead Rock Riders were almost certainly her doing.

Max felt a wholly unexpected rush of relief, at finding somebody alive he had not expected to see again. More than that, to find one of Furiosa’s people when so few of them were left - that alone would have made this trip worth it.

 

Max shuffled backward on his belly and, once he was clear of the edge, cautiously moved further along the canyon. Closer to the blockage he paused at the cluster of men surrounding a white-haired figure carrying what he suspected was Furiosa's SKS rifle.

“…emptied out completely. All the provisions, anything we can use. If you lads could get it out—”

“Who’s gonna guard it?” one of them asked.

“Miss Giddy. You trust her not to take any for herself, don’t you?”

There was a conceding grumble, and four of the lightly injured Warboys - or at least Max assumed they were, their paint was wearing off - went toward the War Rig to climb into its tanker.

“Now Timpani and Treb, could I have you go down the line and collect all the thundersticks you can find? Plus any kits with spare material, I know some of the cars carried them.”

The two men nodded and left, and the white-haired organiser turned around to see who— see who _she_ had left.

“Gilly,” Max murmured in surprise. He should have recognised the woman’s white curls sooner, but to find two of the women alive had been unlooked for. He felt a pleasant warmth in his stomach at the idea that he would be able to bring them to Furiosa.

“Ah, Kaybar. You can help me find the best place to rig to get this whole mess” she waved at the wreckage and the rocks blocking the canyon, “to blow.”

 

 

* * *

 

Kaybar thinks that all in all these old women should be _grateful_ he’d decided to scout up the canyon anyway, see the news for himself what got passed down the line. They seemed to be overwhelmed with things to do and not a single Imperator around to direct things around like it should be. No one around shouting or yelling or _anything_ , it’s a wonder that anything’s getting done.

Luckily, and it does Kaybar proud to see this, his fellow Citadel War Boys were stepping up with only one or two arguments between them— and maybe a couple breaks to pay respects to the Immortan. None of the few Farmer Boys or Drummer Boys joined the ceremony, but one can’t expect the likes of those to be pious.

Come to think of it, he’s not quite sure why the yellow-painted Farmers or the few remaining Polecats stayed. Sure they were injured, but more than half of them left as soon as they saw how blocked the pass was, and a large amount of those leaving had been injured.

Kaybar himself had lagged behind originally, after the Immortan had mourned his never-born son.His car had been at the far end of the pack when the War Rig with Imperator Furiosa had tore past them in the distance, and he’d had to wait for the rest to peel out. And as he sat in the relative quiet of his car, the purr of the engines revving muffling the sounds of the outside even more, he found himself oddly… like his stomach was whining to the point when he should really fuel up.

Except he’d already eaten today.

He’s not sure why his belly had felt so uncertain once he’d left the roar of the crowd. Why the sight of the History Woman dragging that dead wife around the bulk of a car had stoppered his voice, and why he'd looked away. Then something in him had felt weird and wrong with the thought of leaving the old woman. There was something - some old story that tugged at the sight of her, and he'd thrown open his passenger door and shouted at her to leave the dead wife, to get in. She gave him a strange look and he'd asked her if she'd prefer all her Histories end with her ending.

When he'd peeled out he'd found himself pacing himself with the other Citadel War Boys, not trying to get ahead.

 _The Imperator Furiosa is going back_ , the yells said; _she’s staging a coup_ , they roared, _she’s staging a challenge._

A _challenge_ . War Boys challenge each other all the time for their stuff, in proper matches, or the Pit, or Witnessed duels, but no one had the gall to challenge the Immortan himself. Of _course_ it was the Imperator Furiosa, Kaybar thought, watch any of them try to interrupt her bid and be given a mediocre death. Or worse.

A place on Furiosa’s crew was highly prized, of course, with great status and great rewards, but the whispers say that you have to be absolutely sure you want it. That if she turns angry, Boys tend to come back missing and no crew will meet anyone’s eyes or remember anything worth Witnessing.

Kaybar had shuddered at the thought and maybe he'd slowed down a little more, given that he was ferrying a History Person to Remember for them all, even if he thought that the rest of the Citadel cars seem to be driving a little slow. The Plows had raced ahead of them, same with the Polecats and the Mobile Refinery, maybe even a Salvage Car or two. But Kaybar couldn't blame them; this might have been the Salvage Crew's only chance to die historic, iffy though it was.

By the time he’d caught up, his lancer muttering all the while and whacking at the hood of the car in disgust. The three war parties were all bunched up at the mouth of the canyon, War Boys making War on each other, a total madhouse, a complete free-for-all.

He’d circled the mess to get the lay of the land, finding a couple non-combatants to chat up, and the land looked bumpy. People Eater had apparently ate it during the fighting and the Bullet Farmer was nowhere to be found. A couple enterprising crews from those towns had started claiming seniority and leadership rights; which other crews didn’t like, and it flat out led to a pair of intra-town wars being staged right there.

Maybe half of the Citadel Boys were edging around the fighting, planning to go around the mountain range to head to the Citadel, Kaybar thought, watching them go. Most of the rest were viewing the fight with an entertained air, cheering for one faction or another, taking bets. He saw one Citadel based-crew actually split off from the group going around the range, and looked to be heading to Gastown themselves. He’d scratched his neck and wondered how long it would take the Gastown Boys to notice, and can’t decide whether he’d rather see that group succeed or fall to the crews that come from there. If they succeeded in taking Gastown, Kaybar would kick himself so hard for not thinking of it himself, first.

Any rate, he didn’t stay long to watch to see who’d won, he and a couple others and the History Woman too were curious to see if the reports coming up from the canyon proved true, if the Immortan really was dead.

And lo’ he was!

No man could survive having his face ripped off like that, and they’d found the remainder of the Imperator’s arm too. It was a _sight_ and Kaybar kept half-expecting the Immortan to rise again, maybe reforming himself from that piece of jaw. Maybe on the third day, he’d some vague recollection of some story like that. Some distant and deep memory of feeling warm and a soft voice telling him soft things. A silly thing, maybe, that he should have outgrown, but he still keeps glancing at the jaw.

It’s the third day today, here at the end of the canyon.

“Kaybar, do you think we should move the working vehicles further back?” the woman interrupts his thoughts.

He has a moment of annoyance but can’t help but see she’s right, the rocks might bounce right into them, depending on they fall and if they’re the rolling sort.

“Yeah we should,” Kaybar replies, and follows her to the pair of vehicles the War Boys cobbled together. Honestly, he doesn’t know what she’d do without him.

 

* * *

 

Max hadn't expected to find the Vuvalini alive, but even if he _had_ he would never have expected for Warboys to be listening to their orders. Then again, most of them were injured and they seemed -- less the kamakrazee types Max remembered from the Citadel, when he was a bloodbag. They were doing their V8 chants, but even that seemed subdued, as if they were hanging on to a ritual because accepting that Joe was dead was too frightening to process.

Of course, Gilly wasn't exactly giving orders the Warboys would recognise.

Max retreated to a safer position, because it would be embarrassing to mistakenly get shot through the head by Vicks when he'd come to rescue them. There were several vehicles that looked like they worked, or could be made to work - some of them further back hadn't so much crashed as gotten stuck between others cars. The Citadel desperately needed anything that would drive. And loathe as he was to think about exposing himself to the Warboys here, the Citadel needed all the people who were willing to ally with it, too.

He'd been taken by surprise by Austeyr's pragmatic attitude. The Warboy had apparently been more invested in being Furiosa's crew than in the Immortan's, but he'd also been quick to accept that Furiosa had fought Joe and won, and that that meant she now got his 'stuff'. Max wondered if these men would have the same thought process.

He watched the people in the canyon for a while longer, trying to scrape up the nerve to make contact. He hadn't, historically, done well when approaching people, and it was a hard impulse to defy to just go back to the buggy he'd been given and keep driving.

No, no, he couldn't. He needed to get back to Furiosa, she wasn't well, she might need more blood. And since he couldn't very well go back to the Citadel with empty hands, especially now he knew Gilly and Vicks were alive…

He waited until the Warboy was mostly out of earshot and aimed the reflection of his looking glass at the ground in front of her. She froze, and he saw her hand flex on the grip of the rifle, clearly hesitating if she should raise it. He gambled on her knowing morse code, and spelled out FOOL with the reflection.

Her hand relaxed, and she made short, sharp chopping motions, interspersed with sideways swipes of her hand. It took him a moment too long to realise she was signing back in Morse, and he signalled the 'please repeat' code, hoping her knowledge covered that. She went to examine the supplies the warboys were digging out of the tanker. Meanwhile her hand signalled to him

FURI? OTHERS?

He flashed back with the reflection

ALIVE. HAVE CONTROL

The line of her shoulders communicated her pure relief at that.

WARBOYS? he signalled next.

He almost laughed at her irritated handwave, as if she was saying "Use your words, boy!" like Keeper of the Seeds had done a few times.

WILL THEY FOLLOW FURI he spelled out carefully. They could use all the people they could get, but only if they would be more help than hinder. Bringing a potential rebellion into the barely under control Citadel...

Gilly waited until the Warboys were out of her sight, and then turned around, finding him unerringly on the tall, craggy rock wall. She gave him a very dry look, and then gestured for him to come down and talk to her.

He froze, reflexively shaking his head, then hoped she couldn't see him. After a moment she shrugged and walked away, calling out to one of the drummers, and Max was left behind safe and high on his rock ledge, not sure what to do with himself.

He watched for a while, saw her collect lances and guzzoline, watched her improvised explosives and try to put them in the most strategic locations. Then he finally managed to shake himself into motion, and went to the other side of the blockage. He'd brought explosives.

But if he set his to fire on this side, it might mistime with what the Vuvalini were attempting on the other side. And it’s not like he has remote detonators on him so that he could coordinate with Gilly via signal. Max realized that he needed to actually meet up with people and speak; Glory was giving him a very pointed look and throwing a pebble at his shoulder.

He clenched his jaw and worked his way back over to the top and steadied himself to approach the groups on the other side.

He ducked behind the bulk of the overturned War Rig and took a moment to compose himself. He wasn't sure how the Warboys would react to the sudden appearance of a stranger in the canyon, but he didn't think he'd want to find out. He needed to speak to Gilly first. Irritated with himself for not knowing a better way, he resigned himself to wait until he hear her voice close by. When he finally did, he tossed a pebble at Gilly’s feet.

"Who's that, pissin' about?" she grouched. Then, when she caught sight of him, "Ah, it's Furiosa's stray cat man."

In a quick motion she scooped up a stone and zinged it right at his shoulder. Where Glory hit.

The girl giggled.

The vuvalini looked around, then came into his direction, ducking into the shadow of the rig.

"Decided to stop sitting about?"

"Hm. I have some, ah, explosives. Thought they might… might help," he told her.

“What might help is you quitting slouching around the rocks and coming over to fix up these cars.”

He hummed in acknowledgement, giving her an uneasy look.

“Too many wrecks and not enough hands to process it all. Could’ve used you earlier actually, what with setting up the pyre.”

Max felt a squirm of guilt run up through him. He'd watched as they had moved bodies into the most mangled car wreck they'd been able to separate from the rest. Watched as they had poured precious guzzoline and let the flames grow high. The Warboys wouldn't have done that, he didn't think, but the Vuvalini had insisted, both on the dignity for the dead and for sanitary reasons.

Gilly’s expression softened.

“Oh, lay that aside then, come on, let me introduce you to some of these Boys.”

She led him out from behind the rocks and a small ripple cascaded in the movements of the warboys nearest him, heads that turned that became whispers that seemed to flow down the rocks towards every warboy in the vicinity. They stared at Max and he shifted his weight forward and hands drifting gunward but the stares held confusion instead of animosity.

 _Wait._ They were staring at his neck, at the scarf there.

An old woman was approaching them, cutting through the smudged white bodies unerringly. Her wrinkled skin was smudged blue with tattoos. She stood before him and held herself tall despite the bend in her spine and her general lack of height, “A new Imperator, you look like!”

Max stared back, willing himself not to make a movement that looked uncertain, that looked weak under so many judging eyes, “Scarf’s from Furiosa.”

A murmur rose from the warboys nearby.

"Hmm. Why'd she give it to you?"

“In thanks, originally.” It was after he’d refused a bike. She’d pressed the scarf on him the morning after, and stared at him until he understood that she didn’t want to ask him to take it. He'd only understood much later, speaking with Nux as they were refilling the Rig with guzzoline, that it had meant rank. Meant to ease his passage if he should encounter more warboys.

“And now?”

“...her crew wanted me to wear it.” Max knew he couldn’t say anything about Furiosa’s state, needing to present a strong showing. He tried to shove away the memory of her laboured breath, how weak she'd been. He needed to get back, he needed to be there if she needed his blood again. _She's fine,_ he tried telling himself. _She's on the mend._ “And she hasn’t taken it back.”

The whispers grew louder. And the old woman nodded in seeming relief, “So you’ve seen her recently?”

“Yeah.” Max slid his eyes to the warboys watching them, “Furiosa and hers have control of the Citadel.”

The noise cut out.

But only for a moment. A couple bodies walked towards him while others crashed apart into arguing groups.

"The other girls are all right?" the old woman asked up at him quietly, with barely concealed hope.

“Mm, yeah," Max nodded, finally realising this had to be Miss Giddy. He'd heard the girls talk about her; they had assumed she was dead. Her shoulders caved in on themselves a little as if tired of holding themselves high, and she nodded at him, mouth tight, eyes bright. He looked up to the warboys who were watching. “Could use the help back there, could use extra hands.”

And he could see them thinking about it, flickering their gaze to where they'd been worshipping a bloody jawbone and a breathing mask. Some of them nodded slightly, others just stepped forward, as if volunteering for work. Max hesitated and glanced at Gilly

"All right, now that's settled, let's get cracking," Gilly said, mostly directed at the warboys. "Is the rig emptied out yet?"

They all got moving, some more reluctant than others, but they did.

"Anybody, uh, anybody else here I know?" Max asked Gilly. He knew, he _knew_ , that Nux didn't survive, but he asked anyway, he had to.

"The Warboy was--" Gilly shakes her head.

Max grunted in acknowledgement.

"Sorry about…" he gestured out to the far side of the canyon, at the wasteland beyond where they'd lost two of the Vuvalini.

She turned with him in the direction he'd pointed.

"Valkyrie and Mhaadi," she supplied, making the soul-catching gesture. Max hummed and copied her, a little awkward with if he should, and if it would be respectful of him to copy it as such. He thought about the two women he'd never had a chance to know beyond watching their bravery, and then he thought about Angharad. The Vuvalini would have liked her, he thought.

He shook himself and let Gilly put him to work. When a while later two drummers were picking his brain about what he'd seen of Doof's death - _they were writing an epic ballad about Doof's historic death, you see_ \- Max's twitchy nerves slowly eased.


	4. Chapter 4

Ace woke up as dawn cracked over the edge of the desert, the light hitting him from his seat a little away from the mattress where a pile of war boys and the boss slept. He’d napped on couple spare cushions that they’d always used to extend Furiosa’s mattress space, but his bones still ache. He blamed it on the cold— didn’t look at the warm looking pile that everyone else fell into— and thought about getting a jump on the day.

The night before ended on a strange note. After Rachet, who’d quietly watched Furiosa’s discussion with Austeyr about the paint, asked if it mattered that the same white paint dusted Furiosa’s mattress; Kompass and Ace had exchanged glances and immediately set about finding out if it could be washed or replaced. While Ace was dealing with finding a loan mattress (the ones from the Vaults and from the Immortan’s rooms immediately veto’d, same with most other Imperators, perhaps a new one could be made? is there enough supplies? maybe work out something from storage…) he’d overheard an intense conversation between Austeyr and Kompass about it being important to the Boss that “the crew _stays alive_.”

“Hey look, I know, I get it.” Austeyr replied, looking out the window instead of meeting Kompass’ eyes.

“ _Do_ you?” Kompass asked, shoving a wet cloth into Austeyr’s hands, “ _Did_ you?”

Ace had no idea what Kompass was talking about, was he referring to the Buzzard battle from before the storm?

Whatever the case, Austeyr only stared down at the cloth and started wiping at his arms. Kompass reacted as if that was no sort of victory or concession and stomped over to where Gale was holding out some wet cloths to fetch one. And then went to scrub at Austeyr’s back as if the whole thing offended him.

Ace and Rachet had exchanged a glance but for once they were both equally lost. Austeyr was one of those that normally rolled past Kompass’ grumpiness, and Kompass’ anger rarely looked quite so… hovering.

“I’m gonna— see to Stuffs, yeah?” Rachet mumbled, sidling out the door, “Stitch something up maybe. Yeah.”

Rachet eventually worked something out, and a newly-stitched mattress was hauled over by several freshly washed war pups in exchange for the old mattress and two pillows Furiosa had that were currently unused. But even though his barter took an hour, the air still remained strange around the other two war boys, even despite Ace’s questioning.

Ace stopped questioning once he saw that they were both dug in on their silence, looking at him mulishly as if it wasn’t his place. And that’s when he’d retreated to his own cushion a bit apart from them, Furiosa looking on blankly.

He’d always thought that that expression meant she had something to say but was working out the words, and he had always trusted her to tell him when she was ready.

( _"Boss?" Just let me **help** you _

“ _Alright, I’ll pass it down the line.”_ )

And maybe, maybe he was reading her wrong again but Ace could only work with what he had.. And he couldn't help but try.

He stretched a bit, working out the knots around his tumors and then headed out the door. There were War boys he needed to talk to. He ignored the quiet gaze of a pair of green eyes that followed him because, damn it all, but he didn’t want to see whatever expression was or wasn’t in them.

 

* * *

 

“This other knee’s looking swollen,” Capable called out to Gale who was working on an injured warboy the next ledge over. She had been checking over the splint on the right leg when she couldn’t help noticing that the pant leg was sitting oddly on the other. When she’d asked to check it over, the war boy insisted that he could walk on it just fine, but flinched when she applied pressure.

Gale walked towards her, swearing audibly about war boys hiding injuries. Capable watched as the man’s jaw set itself and his shoulders tense up as she approached, and when she asked if she could roll up his pant leg he stiffly pointed out that the knee’s probably too large to do that proper and then went ahead and cut open the seam on the side.

“Why would you cut up a pair of pants,” the vuvalini muttered at the waste.

“ ‘S not like there aren’t people to stitch them up, right?” he didn’t look at them, folding the cloth carefully up and out of the way, fixing it around his thigh with a spare belt.

"You could just pull 'em down."

He looked uneasy and muttered something about 'Don't want to be without pants here.'

Capable gave a double take, that couldn’t be… and then was distracted by the Vuvalini mixing up a paste from what smelled like a bit of mashed up ginger and water.

“What’s that?”

“A bit of a treatment for swollen joints,” Gale replied distractedly, placing the paste in the middle of a bit of cloth and then rubbing it together. She wrapped the poultice around the knee after wiping the knee down, and Capable can’t help prodding.

“But what is it?”

The vuvalini darted her gaze up, “I will tell you later.” And then the older woman looked at the war boy, but he wasn’t even looking at them, staring off to the side at where a war pup attended another injured at a far ledge.

“Why not now?” Capable pressed, sensing the reason and then feeling it stronger when Gale gave her a quelling look, “Why not here so that _both_ of us can learn?”

The war boy looked over at that, and the vuvalini said, “You don’t just give away high ground.”

“I don’t want to be an Organic Mechanic,” the war boy said simultaneously.

“I’m a _healer_.” Gale insisted.

“That’s just a different _word_ for the same thing, right?”

“Look,” Capable interrupted, “I’ve been talking to the boys I’ve been working on and it seems like not one knows how to… to make things better with themselves. You can fix engines right? That’s why you pattern yourselves up like that.” She nodded at the double row of interlocking gears curving its way down the war boy’s arm. Looked at in a certain way, they almost looked like a twist of flowers.

“Engines though, they make sense, can be fixed.” the war boy muttered, “We’re half-lives, most you can do is magyver things a little longer before kicking it and hopefully mcfeasting it proper.”

“You’re talking like you shouldn’t even _try_ ,” the vuvalini steamed at the younger man. “Like just by existing you’re ‘unfixable’.”

“We’re War Boys,” he said like that was reason enough.

Gale stared at him and then said, “It’s ginger, it’s a root found in the greenhouses, flowers pretty, tastes hot. Take about half of your thumbnail’s length and size and smash it down with a little aqua cola. Warm it up and wrap for… until about now. It should reduce the inflammation and if the ginger’s not too dirty stick in water and let it steep. Drink it too.”

“Thank you Miss Gale,” Capable said, “I’ll be sure to get more of this to him so that he could keep the swelling down himself.”

"Good." Gale humphed and went back to her original patient.

Capable watched the war boy look somewhat at a loss, “I’ll share some of what I know, if you’re interested. It’s not much but...”

"You want us to magyver ourselves?" There was a bit of panic in those eyes.

"Not completely, not all at once,” She said gently, “But for some things, isn't that better than having to depend on somebody else?"

His eyes went distant for a moment, and he shivered. "Yeah, okay."

“And I think it’s helpful to have more than one set of hands work a Rig, don’t you? What’s your name?”

“...Pitch.”

“The space between the notches on a gear?” she mused, as she glanced at his scarification.

“Yeah,” he looked a bit surprised at her knowing such, but Capable only nodded at him.

“I think it’s worth taking care of yourself, Pitch, instead of running on empty,” she said this carefully slipping the poultice off and handing it to him, “You’re… I mean you went to Tenday too I thought? You’re not a Thing. So you can grow, instead of only running down. You can heal, instead of staying where someone put you.”

Pitch looked up at her as if this wasn't completely sinking in yet, but his fingers folded around the poultice wrap, and he nodded back.

She smiled at him and patted his shoulder, “Come over if you want to talk some more.” And she left him to go to the next ledge.

Capable couldn’t help glancing back though and she found Pitch staring off into the distance, hand scratching at the back of his neck.

His fingertips kept catching on his brand.

 

* * *

 

Cheedo followed Spring as the war pup as he darted quickly through the hallways, looking back to check on her keeping up every so often. He slowed down as he neared a corner, and then darted into a small alcove.

A trick of the way air funnels made the words in the next room perfectly audible, she realized, and settled in to listen while the Spring posted himself by the alcove opening, adjusting his steel claws.

“You’re thinkin’ it too right?” A deep voice attempted to whisper.

“Yeah, no way Kompass wasn’t coerced and dictatored by those breeders. He said it himself, ‘trust our own eyes and ears’.”

“I know! And who would trust such creatures. Bet they’re lying, bet they’re making a big deal out of nothing,” the third voice whined his assertion through what sounded like a stuffed nose.

“Kompass probably has his hands tied though, what with that Imperator of his and being on her crew.” The words were leered out and met with laughter. Cheedo counted maybe six different pitches.

“Yeah, I don’t know about that Ace, y’hear what he’s been doin’?”

“Ridiculous it is, takin’ away our Rights like that.”

“I know! We earned it and y’think the breeders would be more grateful to be bred.”

“They’d be grateful I think, if we reset things to the way they were.”

“Take the Citadel for ourselves, you mean?”

“Not many of us here all told, thirty two war boys, and don’t tell me you’re so mediocre that you can’t take on some pup and skinny mill rats. The seven of us should be more than enough.”

“You got a plan, then, Lance?” And Cheedo thought she heard wrong, because that sounded like that one war boy Dag spoke to, on the crutch, the one who had seemed like he’d shared their experiences in part, who had been just as glad that it ended—

“Oti, why the face? Don’tcha trust crew?”

“ ‘Course I trust it, but I’d trust it more if I go over the plan. Last time you had an idea you almost tipped over our Rig, gettin’ everyone to bolt more gunners perches than it could bear.” More laughter.

“That was _one time_!”

“How about when you’d thought to add a five cluster to the base of three cluster lances?”

“Took out an entire Buzzard car with one lance!”

“Nearly took out y’face and flamed out two others.”

“T’ch! I remember Oti pulling you out of that one too.”

“Good in a _tight spot_ , Oti is, innit that right?”

The group’s laughter was then strained and a bit edged and Oti’s flat voice cut through it, the sound of a crutch tapping, moving forward, looming forward, “Do you want my help or not?”

“You’re with us then, Oti?”

“...yeah.”

 

* * *

 

The broad shouldered war boy was the last to leave, luckily. It was easy to call at him from the alcove.

“You lied.”

He’d whipped around and Spring put his hands at ready but Cheedo pressed his arm back and moved to stand between them.

“What are you doing here?” Oti asked her, eyes wide.

Cheedo simply shook her head because it didn’t matter. “You lied,” she repeated, almost to herself, “to them. I could hear it in your voice.” She looked up at him, to see his face. There’d been a strain to his voice, a mask to it, something that sounded like tone the sisters had when Joe wanted to them to play ‘house’.

Oti looked back at her for a long moment, and then looked to the side. “It’s… easier.”

“To go along with them?” Cheedo whispered. She twisted her fingers together a little and then looked at them as she folded them this way and that, “Or just safer to agree out loud.”

Oti hummed and shrugged and moved to leave.

Cheedo glanced briefly at Spring to stay him and then spoke to Oti’s back, “Do you disagree in silence, then?”

He paused. And shrugged at her again, not looking.

“I think Spring might be real interested in learning about Lance’s plans too. I might end up hearing things when I make my rounds with the war pups.” Cheedo glanced over at Spring. “Unless you think this needs more pups on it?” There was clearly a rebellion brewing and she was willing to throw more of their resources towards making sure that the Citadel stayed theirs.

Spring drew up to all of his seven hands height. “Miss, you might run a tighter and quieter relay if there are fewer. Less chance of discovery and spots where the message gets muddled. Lance looks to be the head, and draggin’ everyone with him.”

“He does have a habit of doing that,” Oti turned to peer down at the war pup, and then over at Cheedo. His face twisted up and he was silent for a long moment, thinking it over. Then he shook his head, “I can only guarantee that I’ll meet you alone.”

“That’s enough,” Spring insisted. “I’ll keep myself safe.”

“And you?” This Oti directed at Cheedo herself. “If any of us are discovered it might lead back to you.”

It made Cheedo raise her chin, “I think... I think it’s worth a little danger, if it gets you, gets us all, a place where you don’t have to just say yes. To be safe.”

Oti’s jaw worked, and then he nodded once, sharply. He left quickly, moving down the hallway, but Cheedo had caught a quick glance at his profile and thought that perhaps that’s what it looked like when someone had lost control of their expression and was trying to fight it back into place.

 

* * *

 

"Hello Ace."

"Janey."

She'd caught him just outside the door of Furiosa's quarters, looking as if he was.. hesitating, for some reason. Like he felt he should go in but wasn't quite ready to. Maybe that was why he agreed so readily to walk with her.

He was looking at her expectantly, and she decided to just start straight into it.

"I talked to Kompass a few days ago, and he said that when your crew is with Furiosa, you can say no." She saw his expression change, and she waved a hand, "I mean when you're _in bed_ with her, that she only wants you to do things with her that you want."

"That's right," he finally said, face closed. Even without the paint he was hard to read. She supposed he had years of experience following orders without giving any indication how he felt about them.

"That's how it is with anybody, from now on. Anybody can say no, Breeder, warboy, wretched - nobody has to do any sexing they don't want to, you understand? That's how it's going to be from now on."

He nodded, and she waited for a question, probably about breeding warpups, but none came.

"Since you're the leader of the warboys—" his face flickered for a moment, some kind of emotion harshly squashed, "and they listen to you, will you speak to them for us?"

"Again?"

Janey blinked.

"What do you mean?"

"Already been tellin' 'em," Ace shrugged.

"...telling them what?" she swallowed down her impatience.

"Boys not used to seein' the breeders walking around. Told 'em there would be no breedin' unless one asked."

Janey tried not to show her surprise. How had he concluded that needed to happen? She'd expected to fight him on this.

"And how did they take that?"

"Think it's a punishment," Ace shrugged uneasily. "Don't understand it much."

"The women didn't want to breed with ya'll, but they were forced to. Now they're no longer forced to."

Ace looked uneasy.

"Even if _you_ didn't force them, if you were nice to them, they knew they had to get pregnant or they would be thrown to the Wretched. So they had no choice. Do you understand?"

He nodded slowly, not meeting her eyes.

"Do you think the warboys will do as you told them?"

"Said I'd throw 'em out a window if not," he said grimly.

"Well." She wasn't sure what she'd expected. They would need to think about some type of justice system soon. "Good."

 

* * *

 

"I'm worried about the Wretched." said Toast, staring out the window. "They'll be the most vulnerable when we're attacked."

Cheedo caught the end of that as she came in from the hallway, stopping next to her to stare down as well. "Would any of the Imperators sink so low that they'd attack the Wretched though?"

"That's probably a question for Furiosa. But also… if whoever returns, promises the Wretched more than we're giving them right now, they might turn against us. We should shore up relations with them somehow."

"How? Until the bean harvest’s ready there's no way we can feed them all full," said Dag, on Toast's other side. "And even then we shouldn't if we want to feed ourselves through to when the squash are ripe- or build up any sort of reserve. We still don’t know where all that water and food’s leaking to, if there’d been that much unaccounted waste or if there's some kind of…" she waved a hand. "Pipeline in place that didn't get written down."

Toast hummed. "We can offer them water, and protection. Shade is worth plenty if you’re coming in from outside. The barracks are near enough empty, and we could move those last warboys up, offer the lower levels to the Wretched. Joe never even had this place at a quarter of capacity. There's room."

"How are we going to make sure they don't storm up here to the stores and the gardens?” Cheedo murmured, “I don't want to fight, not them, but desperation is powerful."

"Deka gives the impression they do organize and police themselves, so we can ask her."

"I really hate the idea of having them in the base levels of the Citadel like lower class citizens." Capable spoke up, leaning against the far wall, hugging herself lightly. “Not separated like that.”

"It's not like it would be locked from the outside. They could bar themselves in there against the siege."

"I'm for it.” Cheedo said, paused a bit at Capable’s expression, “Let's run it past Janey and Gale, and at least talk to Deka, she's seen what we're working with, I think she'll understand."

 

* * *

 

"I think it's a good plan," Janey nodded. "And it's a start for integrating the people more. If they get used to how we want to treat them, that we will sincerely try to feed them, there will be less risk of being overrun."

"There's another thing.” Cheedo looked hesitant, and Dag hoped that she would finally say something, anything, about what had been bothering her the last couple days. There’d been of course many things to be bothered about, but there was a certain tenseness about her when she spoke with those War pups she’d got watching everything. “Furiosa's warboy, Kompass—"

"That's the angry one?"

"Yes," Cheedo nodded. She chewed on her bottom lip. "He's been going around talking to people."

The other women sat up in alarm.

“What sort of people?” Dag asked.

“What sort of talking?” Toast demanded.

"From what the pups say— I mean I _think_ he's rallying support for Furiosa."

 _Support_ , Dag wondered, or questioning loyalties? They look much the same she knew, from how Joe had received the Bullet Farmer and the People Eater on their Year visits. They were so oddly numbered that Dag half-considered that it was made up, designed to be a surprise inspection of the Citadel, sometimes falling on 365 days and sometimes 366.

"You're not sure though, what he’s up to."

Cheedo shook her head. "Some of the people he talked to are— nobody I'd have thought was important. Or it's in a place I can't get eyes and ears on."

"I knew it. Stone-faced smeg," Dag spat. "Why would he help our side, with the things he said to us?"

"I don't think he'd work against Furiosa," Janey said slowly. "When I talked to him a few nights ago, he seemed gutted with the thought that he'd failed her."

"Then why wouldn't he tell us what he's doing?" Capable asked slowly. _Pah,_ Dag mentally agreed, faces are easy enough to fake.

"I think we have to remember that we don't really matter, to them. It's Furiosa that's at the center of their universe. It might not have occurred to him that we would want to be told."

"Or would worry about his loyalty if he didn't tell us," Capable said.

“Or still believe enough of Joe’s trash that he thinks putting War boys back in power is ‘the best thing for her’,” Dag spat, remembering Joe’s lies about locking them away.

"So how do we find out?" Toast insisted.

Capable held her hands out, "Talk to him."

"Talk to him _and_ Furiosa." Cheedo pointed out.

"Ohh, I like it.” Janey clapped her hands and stood up, “If it's something he's doing for her, she'll know of it."

“And if she doesn’t?” Dag asked. “If he’s gone behind her back? Talked to betrayers? Boiling up a rebellion where none can see?”

Cheedo’s face twisted up in a funny way again, and her fingers wove together. “I really don’t think it’s him leading it though,” but her face was uncertain.

“What if he’s gone around giving people ideas?” Dag reached out to unweave Cheedo’s grip, “Best to have it out in front of Furiosa, like you said. Don’t think he’d shred her given the chance, but she certainly drove that Rig into the sandstorm easy.”

“We didn't see her, during - we don't know that it was easy. And she seemed so pleased to have them back, I don’t think she’d be able to now,” Capable spoke up, eyes uneasy.

Dag didn’t know if her sister meant physically or emotionally but that didn’t matter because, “Think he’d stand still and do it half for her, being all twisted wrong by Joe. Probably call it a chrome way to go.”

Keeper had told her that she’d shot everyone she’d ever met out there, and maybe it wasn’t half wrong if it’d kept them alive when all others of the Many Mothers had fallen. Dag felt the weight of Keeper’s seed and anti-seeds both, and maybe she didn’t know how to shoot.

But maybe she wouldn’t have to, to snap someone.

Maybe she can grow words like anti-seeds and use them deadly to defend her sisters.

 

* * *

 

"Got something to talk about with you," Dag said to Kompass.

Dag's tone, aggressive and accusatory, made Furiosa sit up and pay attention. The girl had glanced at her as if in triumph and a bit of regret but then leveled her gaze at Kompass like she could cut him with it. There was a reason, Furiosa, realized, that they were having this conversation in her quarters, and it was that the girls wanted to confront Kompass in front of her. Cheedo looked pale but determined, letting Dag take the word. Janey was, judging by her body language, mostly there as a neutral party, leaning against the far wall, rifle at her side.

Kompass had gone tense and twitchy the moment they came in, but now he shifted away from Furiosa a little, as if he anticipated a blow and didn't want to risk it rebounding onto her. He looked narrow eyed and shoulders set, as if readying himself to be punched in the face; Furiosa knew that to anyone else he may appear only defiant and belligerent but she saw the tenseness in his jaw and his white-knuckled fists. He wasn’t loose, ready to fight, ready to serve; he was bracing for a blow.

"We were curious who you went to talk to a couple of nights ago. In the South tower." Dag said with relish.

The warboy looked oddly relieved for a moment, as if he'd expected a different subject, but then as if something occurred to him and then he returned to looking like he was being used for lance target practice. Furiosa’s eyes narrowed and promised herself to follow up on that later.

“Kompass?” She prompted.

"Went to talk to... to people whose help we need," he mumbled finally. His voice had started out confident, in his usual way of debriefing, but then drifted sideways and uncertain.

"Who, _exactly,_ did you talk to?" Furiosa asked, already feeling the shape of this in the air and cold dread growing in her gut. Through small meetings with the wives, she’d been kept in the loop, even if it felt like trying to see with the dust in her eyes, filtered; she knew that they’ve been trying to weld together the Citadel’s parts that were not strongly affected by the worship of Joe into a new whole. She knew of the compromises made and all the new changes and while she'd always encouraged initiative in her crew, she’d always taken point on their raids. Imperator Xe, whom she replaced, ran his rig from the gilded backseat of the War Rig.

Furiosa instead liked her own hands on the wheel, except she’d gotten stabbed. Had to pass the wheel over to that warboy Nux and it’d felt like she hadn’t really gotten it back ever since. She felt vaguely glad for it even if it ached a bit, seeing these past few days how the girls stepped up and the Vuvalini adopted the Citadel as their own and as her crew took on responsibilities like leading Tenday. And Kompass shouldered responsibility like few others did, except if he did what she thought he'd done…

"I talked to lotta people, but… but they—" he flicked his glance to Dag and Cheedo and Janey, "I think mean the ones we don't mention. Those that Fixer mainly deals with, when his other sources don’t pull through."

She sucked in a breath. _The Soundless_. Furiosa could see Dag's face doing something satisfied, and Kompass looking ashamed, and she squashed her instinctive reaction to feel betrayed by her crew. She didn't like dealing with the Soundless and never would, but this was Kompass, and she _trusted_ Kompass. She trusted him _not to trust them._

“ _Them_. Of course it’s them.” She closed her eyes for a moment and gathered her breath.

“You know them, personal, Boss?” Kompass looked at her, awed.

“Furiosa - you know who he met?” The girls asked her one after the other.

“They’ve always wanted— _Why_?” She interrupted herself, “Why did you approach them?"

Furiosa felt everyone’s eyes on her like a physical weight, like they were waiting for the hammer to fall on Kompass, bloodthirsty like a crowd at the Pit, and it made her neck itch, her stump itch, why were the girls even _here_ when she needed to debrief her crew for this, did they think she was going to dress him down for it?

“Why didn’t you _wait for me_?” She didn’t even have enough attention to waste on the gasps from the girls, and their disbelieving looks.

Kompass still had his eyes on the ground.

“What did you promise that we’ll have to fulfill?”

"I don't know what Morsov or Sprocket woulda done, they were much better at talking, but I know they were always lookin' out for you, Boss, and I tried— I'm tryin' to have your back so as you don't get any nasty surprises." He hesitated, glancing up at her, and she gave him an encouraging nod. He _was_ trying to help, and she was oddly, distantly proud of how far he'd stepped out of his comfort zone to do it, even if she hated her boys bringing themselves to the attention of the Soundless. Nothing good ever came from being in their sights. She wanted to _punch something_.

"Boss, we know you don't like dealing with them, but Fixer—" Kompass paused, rallied. "You know 'e can't be trusted. He don't want all these changes. W—I went to speak to Them so as to get their support for you."

She could scarcely imagine what the Soundless might have thought of such a request.

"...and what did you have to promise?"

"They'll back you, in exchange for a hearing, after."

"Hm." She looked at him steadily. “What did they say, _exactly_.”

“A ‘fair hearing’, if that Max comes back.”

“I can guess what their definition of ‘fair’ means,” Furiosa’s jaw ticked, not looking forward to the meeting already, but something occurred to her about that wording, "And if Max _doesn't_ come back?" She didn't want to think about that, but ignoring worst case scenarios had never served her well.

Kompass looked angry the way he did when someone under his personal watch was Witnessed and Furiosa’s dread grew colder still.

“Austeyr said… he’d take on the loss.”

Furiosa swung her gaze around the room, eyes wide, and whipped back to Kompass, “ _Where_ is he, get him _in here_. Get Rachet and Ace, too, none of you walk around alone. ”

Kompass rose to his feet and jogged out of her quarters, something between relief and determination on his face.

"You believe him?" Dag said.

"I do."

Dag glanced to Janey, who gave a minute nod.

"Who _are_ these people?"

"They're… you don’t know them unless they let you know them; they end everyone they don’t approve. But they took care of… of things, and people, that would otherwise be ignored."

“They were around while Joe was alive?”

“Been around as long as he’d been,” Furiosa looked off, “as far as I know.”

“They were here _all that time_?” Cheedo’s voice trembled.

“And they never helped a one of us,” Dag pointed out.

"That's assuming they had that power," Janey said softly, her eyes on Furiosa.

“Where they able to then?” Toast asked. “Did they have the numbers, the resources?”

She just stared off to the side, mutely.

Capable kneeled down and laid a hand on her forearm, “...Furiosa, what can’t you say?”

Janey finally walked over from her post by the wall and squatted down to try to look at her too. Furiosa couldn’t meet her gaze, a dull roar in her mind.

“Furiosa?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That warboy Oti is, still, totally [young Jason Momoa](https://www.google.com/search?q=young+jason+momoa&es_sm=91&biw=1103&bih=962&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMIn_DJmcyHyAIVT1GICh3tagi6).


	5. Chapter 5

"We're all loaded up."

Max looked at the two vehicles they'd managed to get past the obstruction, and the piled-high buggy he'd come in. He'd found most of the things they'd told him to look for, plus two people nobody was expecting to find alive. They’d seemed to all be organized and listening to the elder’s orders and advice. And these war boys they’d met up with seemed to look forward to heading back to the Citadel and helping out. Why was he still feeling cornered, even with all this wide open space around him?

He watched as two Warboys carried a breathing mask and a bloody lower jaw, and twitched. _Oh yes. That._

Max would be more concerned about potentially bringing a small war party straight to Furiosa’s door if he wasn’t concerned more about the Vuvalini’s injuries, if he hadn’t seen that Furiosa’s people controlled the lifts, if he hadn’t still felt a small forehead bruise left by those two war boys who’d saw him off on this run.

If those war boys, if all of Furiosa’s crew, were so loyal to her as to give up their ties to Joe when she was set against him, could there have been other war boys who never made it onto her crew with similar loyalties? Or at least who might have the _potential_ to have them? Max can’t help but think of Nux, who’d crashed the Rig for him, can’t help but feel the bruise in the pit of his elbow where he’d given of himself after knowing Furiosa for maybe two days. Maybe he just needed to get these war boys to the Citadel and have Furiosa and those girls work on them some.

They started up the vehicles, and set off.

 

* * *

Max really hoped the Buzzards were as beaten down as Austeyr had said. The two cars that had been salvaged from the canyon could barely manage more than walking speed. He was keeping pace to them with the sand buggy, not that it was that much faster.

On it he had the two Vuvalini, three drummers, and a Warboy who seemed to have musical ambitions, and the trailer had been stacked full with as much salvage as they'd been able to strap on. Vicks had Furiosa's prosthetic arm stashed down by her feet. It was damaged, but repairing it might still be easier than building something new.

The drummers were still working on their ballad, working out lines and bouncing melodies from the back of the car, a constant accompaniment Max found he was beginning to enjoy. Vicks, grinning in the passenger seat, referred to them as the Backseat Boys.

The truck sputtering behind them had the wounded laid out in the back, Miss Giddy sitting with them. They'd lost a few more Warboys overnight, ones Max had been worried about transporting. He wondered if somebody had helped them along.

It was an End Times thought. And maybe that should horrify him, but he couldn't feel much beyond hoping it had been fast and kind.

The Organic Mechanic had attended them last. Max knew from observation and personal experience that his version of _kind_ was—

When Gilly had convinced him to come into the canyon to help them, the man had greeted Max with a shouted "Bloodbag!" Nux had used that word in a way that had grated on Max, but he'd had no time to correct the Warboy, and he'd recognised that there was a kind of innocence, to it. That Nux really did see it as a function Max had fulfilled, perhaps. The Organic Mechanic though.. Max had experienced and witnessed enough indignities from the man to see red, and he had shoved him up against the canyon’s rock wall so hard his head had bounced back forward with a satisfying sound.

Gilly had pulled him back from the red rage of it, her voice low and intense, talking about how they needed a medic right now, even if he was a despicable person. Max had given the throat under his hand a good, satisfying squeeze and then turned away. So far it had at least dissuaded others from calling him similarly, or treating him like it.

—Max flinched and tried to turn his focus back to the road. He checked the rearview and saw the last car was still following, and he could feel his shoulders tense.

The third vehicle was one of the polecat base cars, stacked full of the remaining Warboys, plus a few from Gastown and the Bullet Farm who seemed open to joining the New Citadel regime. They'd brought along the breathing mask and jawbone though, and Max was worried about that, worried about bringing a symbol back to the Citadel to worship, something that could easily divide an already fragile situation when they most needed it to be united. Would these men really fight against the forces that were coming for the Citadel, once they made it around the mountains?

There was no room for mistakes here; it would be less than a week before the war parties arrived.

 

* * *

 

That night they arranged the cars in a rough circle, and set watches. Gilly arranged shifts with the SKS rifle between herself, Max and Vicks, but Max only dozed for an hour or so during her  watch. She was perched on the rollbars of the buggy and he'd taken the seat beside her legs, so that the slightest motion would rouse him.

She knew all three of them were keeping a close eye on the third car, none of them confident that there weren't bringing betrayal to the Citadel, with the boys carrying that remnant of Joe. So when she saw three shapes move away from that car and disappear over the nearest dune, she lightly nudged Max awake. He began to move, but she put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Treb, Timpani and Clef were asleep in the back seat, or at least seemed to be. Better not risk anything. She tapped out on his jacket in morse:

3 GONE. NW. BETRAY?

He nodded, only barely visible in the moonless gloom, and eased himself out of the car, ghosting Southwest.

Gilly resisted the urge to keep looking in the direction she knew there'd be a confrontation. She worried for Max - she'd been told he was formidable, but one against three wasn't a sure thing no matter how skillful you were. She reached for the stillness she'd been taught by her Initiate Mother, the discipline of a sniper. Kept her eyes soft and slowly turned to take in the rest of the camp.

There was a quiet noise from the truck with the injured, a gasp like somebody woke from a dream and some sounds of motion, but then it went quiet again.

Her attention had already moved on when she saw motion in the truck, and a slight figure slowly climbed out. The History Woman, Johanna Giddy. The old woman was stiff with the cold and with age, one of their few blankets wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

Gilly tilted her head to indicate she'd seen the other woman, and to welcome her closer, and after a few minutes she settled into the seat where Max had slept. The storied woman looked like every word drawn on her face was half-hidden, folded into her frowns, and she placed herself so she could turn her head away from the car with the injured.

"All is well?" Gilly invited. It was obvious by the older woman's posture that something was not well at all, but Gilly hadn't really gotten the other woman's measure yet. Johanna'd lived in the Citadel for many years, and some of her ideas were very much strange to the Vuvalini way of thinking. However, she'd played an important role in Furiosa's escape with the young women. That made her an ally, at least potentially.

There was a long moment of silence as the History Woman looked at her hands, fingers folding and unfolding as if a leather version of an origami fortune teller, trying to divine meaning from them. She looked back, finally, and whispered, "He's— I can't stop him." The words fell out with an angry-resigned grimace. “I can’t even...”

Gilly saw Vicks come awake in the other seat, the subtle shift in her breathing the only indication.

“Stop who?” Gilly asked, with some sort of dull blankness, it couldn't be what she’d immediately thought based on Johanna’s words and her tone, it had to be something else... “Stop what?”

"All the boys they just. Tell me it's fine. ‘How it’s always been.’ ‘Just the way of things.’ ‘It’s an examination, that's what Mechanics _do_ ',“ The History Woman looked at them warily, somehow small, like she was used to being attacked for these words. She said it slow, like she was watching for their reaction between every slight pause.

Did... did the slimey man not heal him, as was his duty? Did he cause them to go worse? Gilly wondered, _Was that the cause of the bubble of silence the man seemed to bring with his presence?_

“They’d tell me, 'It’s not what you think.’ At least the girls knew it was wrong. I could…" she balled a fist and let it drop to her thigh, and Gilly felt cold as things shifted into perspective. "I could be angry with them and for them. I couldn't stop it, even with the girls," she blew out a long, defeated breath, "but I could do _that_."

"Organic," Gilly breathed, horror washing over her, because this filled in something she hadn't understood - the way the Warboys acted around the man, at once worshipful and uneasy, like nobody wanted his attention on them but they needed his favour in case they got hurt. The way that the air grew tense around some of the Warboys when the man drew near.

She wants to kick something for not realizing it sooner, not seeing the signs better, clearer.

She found herself turning toward the truck, wishing for just a little more light. It'd be easy to shoot him through the head. Dead easy.

She felt Vicky's hand close around her boot, and looked down to see her friend shake her head. Gilly gave a headtilt in answer that meant _'I know_ '. She couldn't kill him with a bullet right here, the whole camp would erupt in a panic. She thought she could probably take him with her knife, but her shoulder wasn't feeling so well that she was certain of it, and if the Warboys reacted unexpectedly, if they defended him, the women would be out-numbered.

"Nobody wants to admit it’s going on, saying that the few cases are flukes. Nobody wants to admit they’ve been hurt. Nobody would defend you.” Johanna reached out with a word-lined hand and put it over where Gilly was clutching her gun. Her skin felt like the memory of paper. “If I'm not... not there to witness it, they can pretend it's not happening, and that it doesn’t matter," Johanna said, voice low and resigned.

Gilly gritted her teeth and made another slow survey of the camp. The sky on the horizon was beginning to colour with the first light of dawn.

And from the side of the sky that was still deep-night, Max was coming over a dune.

 

She hadn't known how worried she was that he wouldn't until she saw him, his head bent, his silhouette oddly distorted by things he was carrying. And not distorted by physical pain; she would’ve thought he was completely uninjured until she noticed the high set of his shoulders, up around his ears, back cowed by more weight than could be explained by the few things he held.

Vicky slipped up onto the watch perch beside her, and Gilly handed over the SKS, shouldered her own rifle to slip down to the sand.

Max wouldn't meet her eyes as he walked up. He was carrying three pairs of boots and a bulk of other items in a cross-body sling improvised from a pair of canvas pants.  

She gently took them from him and stashed them away on the trailer, out of sight. When she turned back, he was still standing there, looking lost and aimless in the gloom.

She didn't know why, but on impulse she reached out to him, brushed a light hand over his shoulder, offered the forehead touch. It took him a moment, but he lowered his head and rested his forehead against hers for the space of a second or so. Seemed to breathe a little easier for it, seemed a little smaller. This man, who took out three battle-ready warboys like it was a normal night-time stroll, who’d scattered men off the War Rig like batting off flies, who’d had a presence like the Wasteland itself, and proven as reliable as Furiosa had called him.

She was sorry for what she needed from him, because he seemed... far away, like he needed to spend some time quietly looking at the sky. He was not the man of easy violence she had thought he was, though he bore all the signs that he once had been. But she needed a reliable weapon, and he was right there, if she was willing to aim and pull the trigger.

 _You don't have to like it, as long as you do it when it's needful_ , she remembered her Initiate Mother's lessons.

"Organic," she breathed, and felt him come to focus next to her. "Giddy says he's—”

Max had already turned towards the car and was moving towards it, like he didn't need to know more than that.

“— _touching_ the Warboys."

He jolted mid-step, a pause like a storm gathering sudden and brutal, a low sound that was almost a growl. And she fell in at his side as he then barreled towards the car.

There wasn't enough light for Gilly to see exactly what the Organic Mechanic was doing, but Max clearly saw enough. He reached in through the open back of the truck and took the man by the throat, and pulled him away from the Warboy and over the tailgate.

“Hey! What’s the big deal?” The Organic Mechanic tried to shrug away from Max’s grip, but the wastelander simply marched him away into the desert, the Mechanic’s arm twisted up behind his back, without a word. “You’ll not get away with this, you _need me_ back at the Citadel. Who you gonna have lookin’ after those girls of yours if I don—”

His voice broke off like a cheekbone was smashed in.

There was the sound of a scuffle breaking out, that receded further and further from them.

 

Two Warboys were staring at Gilly with huge eyes. One of them hurriedly rearranged a blanket over the other. A third was firmly pretending to be asleep. She wished she was their Nightengale, who had an instinctive manner with the hurt and injured. Who would know what these boys needed.

Then she reached slowly to her belt and took off her half-full canteen. Set it down in the truck bed for the boys.

She walked around and settled into the driver's seat of the truck, rifle across her lap, trying to breathe stillness into herself.

After a long moment the two Warboys slunk out of the truck, leaning on each other, and huddled together beside the cab, out of sight of the other cars. Gilly kept her eyes on the horizon and tried not to notice the careful way they helped each other wipe down with a rag and then reapply their white warpaint, slow and solemn like a ritual, until all the bruises and handprints were gone. Until they were both pale and white-clean under the starlight.

When they helped each other back to the truck, she tried not to wonder how much of it was injuries gained from the canyon and injuries gained that night. _Better not to think on it._ The fury served no one.

 

* * *

 

It was nearing sunrise by the time Max came back this time, light enough to see the blood on him. He had the Organic Mechanic's tool belts slung over his shoulder. She reached over and opened the passenger door for him, and he wordlessly sat down. A loud clang bounced around the car as the the toolbelts hit the bottom of the footwell.

After a few long minutes of silence one of the Warboys in the back cautiously set down the canteen between the front seats, and with it a rag.

Max looked far away inside his own head, staring through the cracked windshield. Gilly dampened the rag and, when he didn't seem to notice her, draped it over his hands, which he blinked at and slowly then started to wipe them down.

She traded the rag for her canteen after a moment, and he drank from it in a long gulp. When he put it down finally, he seemed to shiver all over as if an animal trying to shake off sand.

The man seemed to start and then reach into his pockets, here, there. And he came out with a little round tin.

He placed it carefully between the front seats, and pushed it backwards with a finger.

“Mmm, it’s salve.”

Gilly looked at it and asked, “May I?” At the Wastelander’s nod, she picked it up carefully and unscrewed the lid to see a brown cream with a familiar smell that she’d not caught wind of since the Green Place soured. “Wound cream,” she pronounced and placed it back. “It should also help sooth any bruises, or, ah… I don’t know what you need from us. I don’t know what he...” she trailed off awkwardly, remembering Johanna’s words about the war boy’s collective repression and denial. Gilly didn’t know the details of what that foul man did, but it _counted_ , whatever it was; the scars he’d left behind him were writ clear in their faces and eyes, in how the slimmer Warboy watched her warily, reaching forward slow as if ready to flinch.

He picked up the small tin of wound cream and dabbed a finger at it experimentally, eyes narrowing.

“Where… did you get this?” He was spreading the cream on the deep tear on his arm even as he spoke, “Kukri, here,” and passing the tin over to Kukri who’d started smearing it over the gash on his side. “I recognize it.”

“Should, ‘s from the Citadel,” the Wastelander mumbled, “was a gift. Don’t know their name.”

Kukri froze and looked over. “Razor, isn’t that—”

Razor just made a sharp hushing movement, and his jaw looked hard, “Do you even realize what you’re... what you’re just handing over here?”

“Mm.”

“We’re _half-lives_ , nearing the end of it, and needing a Mechanic’s attention to even be useful, why waste— why _bother_ —”

“Don’t need any part of him,” Gilly bursts out, “Not a bit.” She spat in the sand beside the car.

Max only stared out the window silently, audibly grinding his teeth.

Kukri watched them. Then carefully closed the lid of the tin and slid it back into its place between them all.

The four of them; Gilly, Max, and the Warboys, awaited the dawn in silence.

None of them slept.

 

* * *

 

“Y’know,” The Organic muttered from where he leaned against the side of the truck. “I think you overreacted.” His right arm hung awkwardly and his face was half-caved in and the edges of him were transparent. He had a twist in his neck.

Max told himself that the man was dead, he’d made sure of it.

“I think they’d be needing me back at the Citadel and you just shot yourself in yer own liver.” He picked at his teeth with an oddly-stained bit of metal, and the spat off to the side, “Think you just let some people die. Think they might as well died with your own hands.” The Organic Mechanic grinned through his bruises on what’s left of his face and Max knew that the bruise would match the shape of his fist.

“Remind me again, how well off was that Furiosa girl when you’d left her?”

The ghost laughed as the sound of her wheezing breath filled Max’s hearing again.

“She made for a very pretty War boy, did you know that?”

Max stared fixedly at the horizon.

 

* * *

 

The cars hissed, tired and winded.

They’ve been making their slow way to the Citadel after the bloody morning, Gilly driving the truck with the Wastelander mute and stone-faced next to her. The blankness of his stare unnerved her even if she knew the reason for it.

But all cars were piled high with people and salvage and even the warboys stopped when vehicles complained. And since they were all stopped anyway, they went ahead and pushed everyone into a circle, a space to share their meals and a bit to drink. The warboys fell into it easily enough, from the couple day’s habit that they’d pushed them into a proper pit stop with the lure of produce and veg. Max, to the surprise of all, dug out two thermos with still-fresh mother’s milk and passed it around to the other’s awed delight.

“Was a gift,” the man muttered when they pressed them for how he’d got his hands on some, and this caused the warboys to stare at him for long seconds, whispering among themselves in a rush.

"A gift?"

“ _This_ much?”  
"How can that—"  
"Shh, don't question it"  
"A _gift!_ "  
"He must be Favoured, weird Wasteland smeg."  
"Why would he _share?_ "  
"Shhh!"

"Hey, where's Schrade, and Esee?" one of the polecats asked, twisting his head here and there, nervous and twitchy.

Gilly tried not to come to attention too obviously. She saw Vicks do the same, weapons at the ready for a confrontation.

"Thought they must have gone in t'other car. Haven't seen Mace yet either." The Citadel boy who spoke didn’t seem like he much cared, mouth pinched like he’d thought about spitting.

"Took a walk." Max spoke up.

His eyes were hard and the way his face was set seemed to suck all the air out of the bowl of the sky.

A pair of Farmer Boys edged away slightly from where they sat to his left, glancing at each other.

“Ey,” Kaybar’s eyes narrowed, “Did he take a walk or ‘take a walk’.”

The man flicked his eyes to the war boy and Vicky slid her hand to her rifle as the meal circle stilled.

"Well fuck, that fucker had new boots," Kaybar spat, “Been having my eye on those, he was my size."

(Gilly is horrified. For the Vuvalini each person is a valued resource.)

“ Hey if you have them... whadaya want for them in trade?”

“Trade?” Max asked blankly.

Kaybar nodded at the man’s boots, “Those look plenty good enough and better fitting on you than his would. What would you need a second pair for?”

The man just looked perplexed overall and Vicky found herself confused as well, what could the Wastelander possibly want in trade that he did not already have…

“How’s about a can of chrome,” Kaybar smiled a salesman smile, “All Warboys have one, can't die chrome without it. Without a can you might as well be a repair boy, or garden crew, no chance of the Gates of Valhalla opening for y...you…?”

His voice drifted off as Max pulled such a can as was described from his pocket and everyone collectively blinked at him.

“Okay, where—”

“One of Furiosa’s,” the man’s forehead furrowed in thought, “Named Austeyr.”

“Then…” Kaybar visibly floundered. “Your shoes for—”

“A story?” Miss Giddy asked.

The warboys looked taken aback by the entire concept, “Trade boots for… a _story_?”

There was some snickering. Kaybar was one of them, and was opening his mouth with laughter in his eyes—

“A good one.” Miss Giddy insisted, “Something worth Witnessing is as valuable as any object.”

Silence.

Kaybar’s mouth opened and closed, opened again, “Well the Immortan’s face—”

“Seen it,” Max interrupted, “Not worth a boot.”

An outraged rumble.

“Anything that could help Furiosa back at the Citadel?” Miss Giddy pressed.

The warboy seemed stumped for awhile.

"Which Imperators went around the mountains? How many Warboys did they take? How many cars?" Miss Giddy continued.

Kaybar slung his gaze over at her and looked thoughtful, “From what I remember, they were already bloodying it up as soon as word passed down the line that the leader of the three town’s gone to Vahalla." he thought for a moment, then nodded, "Leadership of the three defaults to the last of them alive, but no one knows what plans there were if all three were wiped. Last I’d seen, both Gastown and Bullet Farm Imperators were going at it, some of the dumber Citadel Imperators too, but maybe three Imperators had already drove off with what crew they’d manage to rally. Say 100? 150?”

Max squinted, “their resources hold up for that?”

The warboy looked up for a minute and then winced.

"Every car has guzz and Aqua Cola, but a lotta that was already used on the run out. Even if you're not addicted… it’d be a stretch at this point, especially if they're pushing speed."

The wasteland man nodded and walked over to the trailer. Rummaged around.

A pair of boots landed near Kaybar with a spray of sand. “Ey!” But he lowered his hands as quick as the spray landed and grabbed at the boots.

A couple of the war boys laughed at him then, or chatted with each other, eyes darting at Max and the boots, at Miss Giddy and Kaybar, at the thermos of milk that was still travelling the circle. Some simply stayed silent and frowning, minds clearly turning things over.

A few of them quietly went to the polecat car.

Vicky got to her feet to ‘inspect the engines’.

While the others talked, Vicky slowly circled the three cars, trying to stretch her knee. Not everybody was listening in to the conversation. From the corner of her eyes, she saw a huddle of Warboys on the outside of the polecat car. They looked up, but then continued digging a hole.

She watched as one of them took something from the floorboard of the car and dropped it into the shallow hole. It was bloody.

Joe's jawbone and mask.

They each made a solemn V8 gesture over it, something of finality in the nods they gave each other, and then shoved sand into the hole.

"'E would've wanted to be buried on the road," one of them said to Vicky, who hadn't asked. He didn't meet her eyes.

"Yeah. Best thing," another agreed.

She nodded, as if she didn't notice they weren't bending down to fill the hole, just shoving sand with their feet, as if she didn't notice that they stamped on the sand to compact it.  

From the corner of her eye she saw another still figure, watching them, perhaps. Furiosa’s wastelander had perched himself on the roof of the truck, to look over their small encampment, and his head was turned towards them.

His gaze was unfocused, however, and she wasn’t sure what he was actually seeing. Sometimes he'd look at a particular spot of nothing, and then resolutely look away again. Gilly was watching him too, and Vicky met her friend's eyes, sharing a small nod. They needed him as a resource and it would be much harder to manage the group without him available. Here’s to hoping they could keep the wheels spinning, or at least _look_ like they were spinning, until they made it to the Citadel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics of the ballad are:
> 
>  **As Long As You Doof Me**  
>  Although the music has always been a friend of ours  
> We've left our riffs in your hands  
> People say you're crazy and that you are blind  
> Thrashing it on the Wagon  
> And how you got all blind is still a mystery  
> Vahalla's gates opened instead  
> Erased what is written in your history  
> But now all your songs run free.
> 
> I don't care who you wear  
> Where you sing  
> What you play  
> As long as you Doof me  
> Who you wear  
> Where you sing  
> Don't care what you did  
> As long as you Doof me
> 
> Every little war that you have done played on  
> Feels like it's deep within me  
> Doesn't really matter if you died in the sun  
> You thrashed to the end, for me
> 
> I don't care who you wear (face you wear)  
> Where you sing (where you sing)  
> What you play  
> As long as you Doof me (I just know)  
> Who you wear (small red cape~)  
> Where you sing (doof wagon~)  
> Don't care what you did  
> As long as you Doof me (yeah)  
> Every little war that you have done played on  
> Feels like it's deep within me  
> Doesn't really matter if you died in the sun  
> You thrashed to the end, for me

**Author's Note:**

> "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
> 
> \- [The Velveteen Rabbit](http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html)


End file.
